2007-2008 - Annual Audit and Inspection Letter - Derby CC v1.0
Description
Annual Audit and Inspection Letter Derby City Council Audit 2007/08 March 2009 Contents Key messages 3 Purpose, responsibilities and scope 4 How is Derby City Council performing? 5 Looking ahead 17 Closing remarks 18 Status of our reports The Statement of Responsibilities of Auditors and Audited Bodies issued by the Audit Commission explains the respective responsibilities of auditors and of the audited body. Reports prepared by appointed auditors are addressed to non-executive directors/members or officers. They are prepared for the sole use of the audited body. Auditors accept no responsibility to: • any director/member or officer in their individual capacity; or • any third party. Key messages Key messages 1 Derby City Council is improving well. The Council is continuing to improve services across most priority areas and partnership working is effective. It continues to work well with its communities and has further improved its already sound approach to diversity and equality. Value for money has improved. People are feeling safer in their communities and most types and fear of crime are declining. Services for young people and adult social care are good. There are substantial new developments in the City Centre and greater resources for neighbourhoods, particularly in the most deprived wards. Some areas remain problematic, for example around planning, revenues and benefits and timely delivery of some of the regeneration ...
Informations
| Publié par | Fiob |
| Nombre de lectures | 81 |
| Langue | English |
Extrait
Annual Audit and Inspection Letter
Derby City Council
Audit 2007/08
March 2009
Contents Key messages Purpose, responsibilities and scope How is Derby City Council performing? Looking ahead Closing remarks
Status of our reports The Statement of Responsibilities of Auditors and Audited Bodies issued by the Audit Commission explains the respective responsibilities of auditors and of the audited body. Reports prepared by appointed auditors are addressed to non-executive directors/members or officers. They are prepared for the sole use of the audited body. Auditors accept no responsibility to: • any director/member or officer in their individual capacity; or • any third party.
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Key messages
Key messages 1 Derby City Council is improving well. The Council is continuing to improve services across most priority areas and partnership working is effective. It continues to work well with its communities and has further improved its already sound approach to diversity and equality. Value for money has improved. People are feeling safer in their communities and most types and fear of crime are declining. Services for young people and adult social care are good. There are substantial new developments in the City Centre and greater resources for neighbourhoods, particularly in the most deprived wards. Some areas remain problematic, for example around planning, revenues and benefits and timely delivery of some of the regeneration projects, but the Council continues to work to address these. There are robust plans for development and improvement planning is well implemented with good prospects for improvement in both children’s and adult social care services. There is sufficient capacity to deliver the plans for the future and the Council has approved steps to radically improve the working environment of its staff. Performance management is effective and is improving at the partnership level. 2 In common with most areas of the economy the economic downturn has affected local authorities which face the challenge of increasing costs, reducing income and rising service demand. To address these and other financial challenges you have recently reviewed your spending plans. 3 The Council received an unqualified opinion on its 2007/08 financial statements from the external auditor, Grant Thornton UK LLP, on 30 September 2008, in line with the statutory deadline of 30 September. A number of significant adjustments were identified to the prior year balances as well as adjustments to 2007/08. In addition, due to overruns to the audit, the Council were charged an additional £15,000 to complete. 4 The Council's Whole of Government Accounts pack was certified by the due date. 5 The auditor issued a positive conclusion that, in all significant respects, the Council had made proper arrangements to secure economy, efficiency, and effectiveness in its use of resources for the year ended 31 March 2008 on 30 September 2008.
Action needed by the Council 6 The Council must: • ensure it implements the actions arising from 2007/08 audit of accounts; • prepare for the implementation of International Financial Reporting Standards and assess the impact on its financial monitoring and reporting arrangements; and • continue to develop a corporate approach to Comprehensive Area Assessment and the Council's organisational assessment.
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Purpose, responsibilities and scope
Purpose, responsibilities and scope 7 This report provides an overall summary of the Audit Commission's assessment of the Council. It draws on the most recent Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA), the findings and conclusions from the audit of the Council for 2007/08 and from any inspections undertaken since the last Annual Audit and Inspection Letter. It also includes the results of the most recent corporate assessment. 8 We have addressed this letter to members as it is the responsibility of the Council to ensure that proper arrangements are in place for the conduct of its business and that it safeguards and properly accounts for public money. We have made recommendations to assist the Council in meeting its responsibilities. 9 This letter also communicates the significant issues to key external stakeholders, including members of the public. We will publish this letter on the Audit Commission website at www.audit-commission.gov.uk. (In addition the Council is planning to publish it on its website). 10 Your appointed auditor is responsible for planning and carrying out an audit that meets the requirements of the Audit Commission’s Code of Audit Practice (the Code). Under the Code, your appointed auditor reviews and reports on: • the Council’s accounts; • whether the Council has made proper arrangements for securing economy, efficiency and effectiveness in its use of resources (value for money conclusion); and • whether the Council's best value performance plan has been prepared and published in line with legislation and statutory guidance. 11 This letter includes the latest assessment on the Council’s performance under the CPA framework, including our Direction of Travel report and the results of any inspections carried out by the Audit Commission under section 10 of the Local Government Act 1999. It summarises the key issues arising from the CPA and any such inspections. Inspection reports are issued in accordance with the Audit Commission’s duty under section 13 of the 1999 Act. 12 We have listed the reports issued to the Council relating to 2007/08 audit and inspection work at the end of this letter.
Derby City Council 4
How is Derby City Council performing?
How is Derby City Council performing? 13 The Audit Commission’s overall judgement is that Derby City Council is improving well and we have classified Derby City Council as four star in its current level of performance under the Comprehensive Performance Assessment. These assessments have been completed in all single tier and county councils with the following results. Figure 1 Overall performance of councils in CPA 1
Source: Audit Commission
How is Derby City Council performing?
Our overall assessment - the CPA scorecard Table 1 CPA scorecard Element Assessment Direction of Travel judgement Improving well Overall 4 Stars Corporate assessment/capacity to improve 3 out of 4 Current performance Children and young people* 3 out of 4 Social care (adults)* 3 out of 4 Use of resources* 3 out of 4 Housing 4 out of 4 Environment 3 out of 4 Culture 4 out of 4 Benefits 3 out of 4 (Note: * these aspects have a greater influence on the overall CPA score) (1 = lowest, 4 highest) =
The improvement since last year - our Direction of Travel report
What evidence is there of the Council improving outcomes? 14 In 2007 a Corporate Assessment judged the Council to be 'performing well' and since then it has continued to perform well in improving services across most priority areas. 15 The Council has six priorities for 2008-2011: making us proud of our neighbourhoods; creating a 21st Century city centre; leading Derby towards a better environment; supporting everyone in learning and achieving; helping us all to be healthy, active and independent; giving you excellent services and value for money. People are feeling safer in their communities and most types and fear of crime are declining. Key environmental areas such as waste and recycling are improving and performance on providing decent homes remains good, together with some improving trends in respect of homelessness. The Council has invested substantially in improving the City Centre, with developments such as the QUAD visual arts and media centre and improvements to the public realm. There are now 17 Neighbourhood Boards in place to further consolidate the Council’s approach of putting the needs of customers and neighbourhoods at the forefront of its drive to improve the delivery of services.
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How is Derby City Council performing?
16 The Council delivers good services both for children and young people and for adults. For children its contribution to improving outcomes in being healthy and making a positive contribution is outstanding. The commitment to fully engage with children and young people and act upon their views on the services provided is exemplary. The Council’s commitment to narrowing the gap for the most vulnerable children and young people has improved the outcomes for these groups. For adults the Council is delivering well against its priorities. With partners it is providing a wide and improving range of services to help older people remain independent and keep fit and healthy for longer and overall satisfaction with the Council in this area is rising. 17 In recognition of the cross-cutting nature of its priorities, the Council delivers many improvements through strong partnership working. The ambitious programme of regeneration work being delivered through the Derby City Partnership’s City Growth Strategy and Derby Cityscape Master Plan is continuing. There has been effective work in reducing the numbers of 16-19 year olds not in education, employment or training and new libraries are coming on stream combining effective partnership working and community involvement with wider and more imaginative settings, for example, in sports centres or through joint working with the police. The community safety partnership works well in communities to improve the quality of life in priority neighbourhoods and there have been significant improvements on many of the challenges set through the Local Area Agreement (LAA). For example the Derby Healthy City initiative has increased the number of people stopping smoking and helped to reduce premature mortality rates, while the Cultural City initiative has led very strong performance on the B-Active programme where the numbers of young people participating in dance, and schools participating in the Creative Partnership programme is impressive. 18 However, there are areas where the Council is performing less well. Compared to other unitary and county councils Derby's improvement against national performance indicators has been below average for 2007/08, with 60 per cent of indicators having improved since last year, placing Derby 124th out of 150 councils. Improvement in performance indicators over the past three years has been within the average range for similar authorities. Key areas of concern include outcomes for children for ‘enjoying and achieving’ at the ages of 11 and 16. Though slowly improving over time, these remained below those in similar councils and national averages in 2007 and, while performance for 2008 for gaining GCSEs and improvements at key stage 2 looks much better, these figures are, as yet, unaudited. Benefits performance remains poor and this service will come under increasing pressure given current economic forecasts and the likelihood of increasing numbers of vulnerable people becoming eligible for housing and council tax benefits.
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How is Derby City Council performing?
19 The Council engages well with local communities, using their views to develop ambitions and inform action on local priorities. The Council has a strong commitment to community cohesion. It bases its approach on good local knowledge and extensive involvement through various forums, underpinned by a vision of a city where people live together and respect one another. The 17 Neighbourhood Boards have focused support which is increased in the four areas of highest deprivation. Boards now have £15,000 to spend on community projects and consideration is being given to how further decision-making, for example on highways, can be devolved. The Council is working to reduce inequalities between neighbourhoods by supporting job creation through the Workstation model and is looking to build bridges between communities through its Community Cohesion Strategy. Within the City it is working to improve accessibility, for example through its integrated partnership approach within its Trailblazer Service and improvements in public transport facilities, and to increase economic growth and sustainable investment. The Council is continuing to deliver on its responsibilities under race equality and disability legislation. It has Level 3 of the Equalities Standard (in the top third of councils nationally) and is performing well in respect of the balance of its workforce and its duty to promote race equality. 20 The council provides good value for money. There is a strong track record of managing costs alongside the quality of services, while responding to local needs. There are innovative approaches to improving cost-effectiveness, joint procurement is used to secure VFM (for example with the county council and the NHS), efficiency review has been integrated into performance management arrangements and the Council has analysis and challenge of VFM embedded across all services. The Council has met its individual efficiency target each year and remains ahead of its cumulative target. How much progress is being made to implement improvement plans to sustain future improvement? 21 The Council has robust plans for improving. It has a clear and challenging vision based on the needs of the area and its communities and extending to the city's wider role in the region. Its ambitions for the area are challenging and realistic with stretching and SMART targets and are founded on a good and improving understanding of the problems and opportunities faced by each neighbourhood in Derby. Robust action plans address the needs of black and minority ethnic communities and other groups at risk of disadvantage. Transforming Derby is a comprehensive approach to delivering a fundamental transformation in the way that the Council provides services to its customers. A key element of this is the New Ways of Working project which aims to deliver flexible and efficient ways of working which can adapt to the changing needs of the organisation. Central to this is the £20 million transformation of the Council House which has now been approved and will start in 2009 unless the Council is able to attract an alternative offer for a new building in the city centre. 22 Improvement planning is being well implemented. The Council's own monitoring shows that it is making good progress on achieving corporate plan measures and performance indicators. 85 per cent of targets are forecast to be met by year-end, though 9 per cent will miss target by more than 5 per cent.
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How is Derby City Council performing?
23 Areas of under-performance are being tackled by the Council although some of these are proving difficult to resolve. The performance surgeries introduced in 2007 have helped to improve performance. 25 of the 30 indicators which have been referred have either had an improvement in 2007/08 or achieved their annual target. A third of surgery indicators demonstrated an improved quartile position. In addition, remodelling of services is helping to make significant improvements. For example in Revenues and Benefits the Customer Service Improvement Programme is helping to develop a ’right first time’ approach. To ensure that there is a similar focus on partnership performance, a Performance Support Group has been created to consider both improving and underperforming indicators and challenge progress against action plans. It will receive quarterly highlight reports and recommendations from Derby City Partnership Management Group and Derby City Council Chief Officer Group, monitor the delivery of local priorities, coordinate review across partners and support Comprehensive Area Assessment. 24 The Council’s capacity to improve its services for children and young people and its management of these services is good. It has made good progress in responding to the recommendations of the 2007 inspection reports and through sharp identification of priorities and careful, creative planning, has made good progress against most outcomes. The Council's capacity to improve adult social care further is promising. There is strong political and organisational commitment and a significantly improved financial settlement this year, including investment in dementia, reflects the priority given to this area by members. ‘A Better Derby for Older People’ is based on the future needs, aspirations and priorities of older people. 25 The Council has the capacity to deliver its plans. It is effective at working in partnership and at identifying and securing external funding to address local priorities. For example it has used PFI credits to develop new schools and for upgrading street lighting. The creation of an ALMO has attracted additional funding which has enabled the Council to meet the ‘decent homes’ standard several years ahead of the deadline and the formation of the urban regeneration company (Derby Cityscape Ltd) has helped to attract private sector investment. This is starting to deliver improvements, for example the Westfield Shopping Centre redevelopment and the Riverlights development. The Council is in the fifth wave of the Building Schools for the Future programme and has met all key targets to date. As a result of a successful joint waste management project with Derbyshire County Council, a preferred bidder is due to be appointed in January 2009 to build a new waste plant to meet the city and county’s domestic and commercial waste disposal requirements for the next 25 years. The contract is worth £500 million. 26 The Council has good service management and is successfully building its internal capacity to deliver its corporate priorities. A strong culture of performance management is developing at all levels, with well-embedded systems and processes holding services to account for their performance and helping to shift resources in line with priorities. Investment is made in under-performing services to secure future improvements in value for money. There is a robust financial strategy and management and the Council is using best procurement practice to improve its capacity to deliver. Significant business risks are well managed, with risk management embedded into strategic planning, financial management, policy-making and review and performance management.
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How is Derby City Council performing?
Service inspections 27 There have been no service inspections in the past year.
The audit of the accounts and value for money 28 The audit of the 2007/08 accounts was carried out in accordance with the Audit Commission’s Code of Audit Practice and applicable auditing standards and the accounts were submitted for audit within the statutory deadline. 29 The audit encountered a number of difficulties where the Council was not as prepared for the audit as it has been in previous years. A complete set of working papers was not made available for audit to support the statement of accounts, which resulted in an inefficient audit process and made the task of completing this year's audit more difficult for the Council's accountants and the audit team. 30 As reported in the Annual report to those charged with governance September 2008, a number of audit adjustments were agreed with officers and reflected in the accounts. This included three significant adjustments, one of which related to 2006/07. 31 The net impact of all audit adjustments on the 2007/08 Income and Expenditure was a decrease of £0.1million. The net impact of adjustments resulting from a correction of prior year treatment was an increase of £18.4million. 32 An action plan was developed and agreed with the Council to address the areas for improvement identified during the course of the audit, which will be followed up through the course of 2008/09. We are pleased to note that the Council held an accounts development workshop, which we presented at, to contribute to improvement in this area. 33 Grant Thornton's review of VFM arrangements resulted in an unqualified VFM conclusion in regard to the Council's arrangements for ensuring economy, efficiency and effectiveness in its use of resources.
Use of Resources 34 The findings of the auditor are an important component of the CPA framework described above. In particular the Use of Resources score is derived from the assessments made by the auditor in the following areas. • Financial reporting (including the preparation of the accounts of the Council and the way these are presented to the public). • Financial management (including how the financial management is integrated with strategy to support council priorities). • Financial standing (including the strength of the Council's financial position). • Internal control (including how effectively the Council maintains proper stewardship and control of its finances). • Value for money (including an assessment of how well the Council balances the costs and quality of its services).
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How is Derby City Council performing?
Assessment 2 out of 4 3 out of 4 4 out of 4 3 out of 4 3 out of 4 3 out of 4
35 For the purposes of the CPA we have assessed the Council’s arrangements for use of resources in these five areas as follows. Table 2 Element Financial reporting Financial management Financial standing Internal control Value for money Overall assessment of the Audit Commission Note: 1 = lowest, 4 = highest 36 The Council has maintained an overall assessment of 3 for Use of Resources. The scores for four of the five elements were maintained at the level attained in 2007. However, the score for financial reporting deteriorated from 3 to 2 because of deteriorations in the score for both of the financial reporting Key Lines of Enquiry (KLOE). 37 As set out above, comprehensive working papers were not ready at the start of our audit and the quality of the working papers provided were not of a high standard. In addition, the draft accounts contained a number of significant errors and disclosure issues. These issues resulted in the assessment for KLOE 1.1 reducing from 3 to 2. The annual report is only a double page spread and does not contain summary financial statements or information about the Council's environmental footprint and, as a result, the Council's score for KLOE 1.2 was reduced from 4 to 3. 38 The Council's performance for KLOE 2.1 was assessed as having deteriorated from 4 to 3. The Council has introduced measures that demonstrate the links between financial and operational objectives. However, this is only going to be fully rolled out in the course of 2008/09 and was not embedded in 2007/08. In addition, there was insufficient evidence that detailed financial modelling is carried out and that it is linked to risk management and financial reports. Despite this score reduction for KLOE 2.1 this did not result in a change in the overall score for financial management, which was maintained at level 3. 39 The Council continues to assessed at level 4 for financial standing. This reflects the fact that the Council continues to demonstrate that it has met all of the level 2, level 3 and level 4 criteria and has further embedded its arrangements during 2007/08. It is this consistency of meeting all of the requirements which is evidence of good practice.
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